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About this project

What are the iCorners™?

iCorners™ were created to provide protection for the iPad ® body and a screen and not negatively impact design aesthetics by keeping most of the tablet housing body exposed and only covering the very corners of the device with clear protective pieces.

How do they work?

iCorners™ are designed in such way that instead of using screen/body protecting accessory (tablet case for example) they would provide scratch/drop damage protection to the screen glass and tablet housing. In case of using Apple iPad® Smart Cover or substitute, iCorners™ would not interfere with its functioning but rather enhance the use of it by adding drop damage protection, housing scratch protection and will help with alignment of Smart Cover within the perimeter of the device when closed.

How are they made?

iCorners™ will be made using Makrolon® polycarbonate because of its unique combinations of properties. It is virtually unbreakable, lightweight with glass-like transparency and is impact resistant – even at extremely low temperatures.

It has a high dimensional stability and is easily molded, yet has excellent heat resistance with a glass transition temperature of up to 148ºC. Impact modified Makrolon® is used in safety goggles, helmets, riot shields, holsters and other tactical gear.

Ease of use

To apply iCorners™ to iPad® we are using 3M™ clear adhesive tape 300LSE. It is unique, high-strength acrylic adhesive that is ideal for applications requiring extremely high peel-bond strength, high temperature tolerance and resistance to chemicals. For easy application it comes on clear PET film for ease of alignment over corners of the housing. 3M™ adhesive tapes are industry standard for applications requiring non-hardening over time adhesives maintaining high bond strength in broad temperature range. If iCorners™ need to be removed from iPad® – tape easily rubs off from smooth iPad® housing without any residue left.

iCorners™ provide sufficient protection for iPad® screen and for minimalist use can be used without cover. When used alone they provide perfect grip on slippery screen and smooth aluminum housing of iPad® .

Compatibility

iCorners™
Air/MiniR are compatible with Apple iPad® Air and iPad® Mini with Retina Display.
They work for both models because Apple standardized features (thank you,
Apple) on them and even though overall dimensions are different – it does not
affect the way iCorners™ are applied to both models. iPad® Mini (1st
Gen) also has similar features and, being thinner (7.2 mm in comparison to 7.5
mm for both Air and Mini Retina), will accept iCorners™ Air/MiniR but they will
not work as they were designed to work for drop protection. We will start
making injection mold for iCorners™ Mini as a stretch goal $100,000 of this campaign
and injection mold for iCorners™ for iPad® 2,3,4 as a stretch goal
$150,000 of this campaign. Pledge $3 to get access to our backer exclusive
updates and blog posts and our sincere appreciation for your support.

Link to Media Kit

Social Links

Our Story

Being
an engineer and using computer tablets (iPads in particular) in my
professional life for product presentations, field documentation etc., I use
them in personal life to same or greater extent. When my six year old girl
dropped our iPad2 from barely 2 feet on porcelain tile in mudroom and it
cracked digitizer screen having a back case installed!!! – I knew that there
should be a better way to protect it, other than our old semi-clear, brand
name, TPU back case (ugly yellowish now after just 1 year!). I have never even
considered getting our iPads in a case that adds three times the thickness and
doubles or triples it in weight. We are getting our gear for premium $$ and
last thing we want to do is to hide it in a bulky, ugly case that has nothing
even remotely of design quality that Apple devices have… Even though new Apple
Smart Case provides some drop protection and does look good – still not as
good as a bare iPad®, and it costs $80 on top of $500-900 we just paid for
tablet itself! That is where iCorners™ come in. Simple to manufacture, made
with tough clear Makrolon® polycarbonate, iCorners™ are designed in such way
that they utilize advantages of Apple iPad® aluminum “unibody” housing
design/implementation which provides, in conjunction with factory glued
digitizer glass cover, structurally more sound (rigid) enclosure (comparing to
the most of the tablet manufacturers market). More rigid enclosure allows
redirecting/ distributing impact load from the point of impact to other parts
of enclosure thus reducing the risk of aluminum housing corner crumple pockets
collapse and resulting digitizer glass cover breakage which, in return, weakens
whole enclosure rigidity and allows housing flexing to greater extents thus
causing even more damage to digitizer glass cover and whole assembly. Geometry
of iCorners™ is making it impossible to create most dangerous impact condition
when direction of impact is dead perpendicular to the landing surface, when all
the energy of impact is dissipated over short travel distance (thickness of the
back case shell for example) before it hits solid housing corner and continues
crashing it inevitably cracking digitizer glass cover and weakening the tablet
assembly in whole. While iCorners™ are not crash proofing the device - they are
greatly reducing the chance of breaking digitizer glass cover and keeping it
and tablet housing itself protected from scratches in everyday use.

Here is a picture of the one of early prototypes that
has not survived testing (saving an iPad though :). They are not clear like our
final prototypes you see in pictures, but we needed strongest material that was
available for 3D printing on PolyJet printer for functional testing. Physical
properties of all materials used for 3D printing are not even in the same range
as in actual parts made by injecting plastic in a mold.

Early prototype

iCorners™ Timeline

Here
is the iCorners™ Timeline. You will notice that we have accomplished some
very significant milestones, including setting up our manufacturing and starting
tooling. We are now focused on finishing injection mold (tooling)
and initial production run before starting full production.

·Engineering Design: Summer and
Fall 2013

·Prototyping/Testing: December
2013/March 2014

·Selected manufacturer: March 2013

·Started Tooling: End of April
2014

·Initial Run Manufacturing: June 2014

·Full Production: End of June 2014

·Shipping Rewards: July 2014

Now we need your, Kickstarters,
support to get project wrapped up and to cover initial production run costs.
Support our project, please! Thank you very much from all of us!

Risks and challenges

We have spent a lot of time to come up with a design, we believe, meets the highest standards of performance, usability and simplicity. After several prototypes and design changes we've finalized tooling design and, after securing private investors interest, started tooling process (plastic injection mold) to be able to start Kickstarter campaign with small enough goal to cover only initial production costs. Mold will be ready for sampling in the end of May which puts us in a beginning of June for the 1st production run. If everything goes smooth (and there is a very little that can go wrong – we have been running manufacturing operations for the large aluminum/zinc die casting company for over 15 years) we should be able to start shipping early bird pledges by the end of June. In case if any unforeseen problems do come up, we will make sure to let our backers know as soon as possible